From Danger Room: How the Afghan Air War Got Stuck in the Sky (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/1..._air_war/all/1). This short article offers an account of how the current gudiance on employing airpower is affecting ground operations. As noted in many other forums, the immediate result is that less ordnace is getting dropped and, in certain tactical situations, that's not good.
However, I'm not going to argue the for/against ICO the current theater guidance on utilizing air support. I'll just point out that one issue this article raises is that we conduct our tactical operations with a certain expectation of having that air support available. While in this case, the lack of immediate air support is consciously self-inflicted, there are many reasons on current and future battlefields where we may be denied the air support we have come to expect. In the "level playing field" of ground versus ground forces, how are we doing (and how will we do)?
In a recent Nightwatch report from AFCEA (to big to attach), one of the stats revealed was that since the new rules have been in effect, curtailing our air support operations, our friendly to enemy kill ratio has moved from about 6to1 to 1to1--an even trade during engagements. Now this is based on open sources and is inexact, but probably exposes a trend (of course this isn't a stat to support COIN success necessarily, but does indicate something with regard to tactical engagements).
In looking at MCDP 1 Warfighting and MCDP 1-3 Tactics, the Marine Corps espouses a concept of combined arms to use fire and maneuver to create a dilemma. In fact, we touted that fires weren't necessarily to destroy, but to enable maneuver. However, this requires enough maneuver elements at the point of engagement. My impression is that the small size of units we are employing has degraded our capability to execute our stated doctrine. We are maneuvering to bring destructive fires to bear, not having enough organic maneuver strength to merely use fires for suppression or temporary neutralization. Based on the fact that over the timeframe of the engagement, there was no discussion of other maneuver units reinforcing this squad, that there were none within supporting distance, given relevant terrain and mobility factors. I was also surprised at the stated ineffectiveness of the mortars and artillery fire.
I'm not in any way disparaging our ground unit's performance and capability. However, I think our dispersed operating methods may really depend upon a concept of air support that has changed. I'm sure our commanders on the ground are wrestling with this. It should also cause us to think about our planned future concepts. As I said, I think there are different ways that we could be denied air support.
Phil Ridderhof USMC
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